


man and shadow meet

by clarinetta



Series: pre-series Barry [2]
Category: Barry (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Depression, Gen, Minor Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Violence, anger issues, mention of drug use, mention of sexual violence against a child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-08 17:35:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20839379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarinetta/pseuds/clarinetta
Summary: When Barry drinks alone in his hotel room, or at his apartment in Cleveland, he will often pull out a notebook he keeps in his backpack and try to write letters of apology to the man he killed in Korengal. Sometimes they are to the man’s wife, or to his children. He was never given (or tried to find out) their names. They start, often, on his third glass of bottom shelf whiskey - long, rambling, overexplanatory, verging on accusing.-Barry as a contract killer, as told through his kills.





	man and shadow meet

**Author's Note:**

> In my mind, this is a continuation on my previous fic by your bloody foot-prints, but you don't really need to have read that to read this.

**Contract #1**

There is something suffocating about Dayton in August. Planes from the air force base flying overhead create a constant background rumble that occasionally reaches a fever pitch when the aircraft flies low. They make the sky feel too close to the ground, muggy air compressed into a smaller space than should be there. The sun refuses to show itself, stubborn clouds turning the skies a hazy uniform grey. Downtown projects a feeling of dirty neglect and intense abandonment despite the brightly colored murals spotting along the concrete walls. The paint peels, uncared for. Discarded trash doesn’t even have the energy to blow about with the dead leaves and just sits crumpled in gutters and near the drains, defeated. Only a few souls walk the streets; some heading for the cool quiet of the library, others returning to work, their dress clothes slightly rumpled from a full morning of sitting at a desk. Barry walks the cracked sidewalks, hands deep in his pockets, consciously taking long deep breaths to counteract the suffocation the city is inflicting on him.

It is his first job. He feels a little like a teenager walking nervously into his first day at Taco Bell. Fuches has sent a car, and given him a new phone, and mailed the gun and silencer. He has, in his fatherly way, taken care of everything on his end, as he promised he would. He even dealt with the client. All Barry has to do is locate the mark, follow him until he is exposed and alone, and shoot him. “Easy peasy,” as Fuches said with a shrug and his customary broad smile. Barry doesn’t know if Fuches is off his rocker or just naive.

He walks into the parking garage that Fuches indicated. The car is a bit of a beater but not noticeably hideous or rusted; black with rounded edges, slightly smudged windows, left front tire in need of a little air but nothing that will have to be taken care of in the short amount of time Barry will have it. Absolutely nothing stands out about the car, and Barry nods as he approaches it. It’s perfect, just as Fuches said it would be. His anxiety goes down a notch, and he is finally able to take his hands out of his pockets and be relatively confident they won’t shake.

He drives to the apartment complex where the mark lives, parks, and does a quick sweep to make sure no one is about. Very few people are; it takes Barry a moment to realize that everyone is probably at work, performing their nine-to-five routines. It makes him feel, uncomfortably, like an alien observing a strange and incomprehensible new species. To take his mind off of it, he studies the small file Fuches gave him on the man for the hundredth time. Legal name: Jared Hockstetter, profession: pimp. Barry’s lip curls slightly at the man’s photograph: a hideous mugshot of a smug, fat face, bejowled and pockmarked and blotchy, bald on top with greying dark hair on the sides. One of his front teeth is chipped and it lends his leering smile a slightly unhinged flavor.

Jared Hockstetter arrives home earlier than Barry expects him, and Barry freezes. He watches his first opportunity, an easy walk up to the man as he checks his mailbox, slip away from him in the space of a few breaths as he sits immobilized in the car. The man walks into his apartment safely, no bullet in his brain, and Barry, suddenly able to move again, smacks himself on the side of the head. _What the hell, idiot! Wake up!_ His face feels flushed, his breath quickened and loud all of a sudden in the stifling hot car. He pushes his palms deep into the sockets of his eyes. The heat, suddenly incredibly oppressive, pushes down on his lungs and it reminds him of Afghanistan, the sun so bright it reflected off every surface, painting everything a blind bleached white.

_Bet you can’t hit that sheepfucker,_ his friend Albert says from five thousand miles away.

“Bet again, motherfucker,” he mumbles, barely aware of having spoken, and spins the silencer onto the end of his gun. He can taste the Afghan dust in his mouth. The heat and weight of Albert next to him on the wall. Jared Hockstetter steps out of his apartment; the street is utterly deserted. Barry gets out of the car. He breathes in heavy city air and Afghan sand in one breath. He is here and not here. He walks up behind Jared Hockstetter as the man fumbles with his keys and shoots him in the back of the head, twice. The mark falls never knowing what hit him. Barry sees and does not see the blood spatter as he walks calmly back to his car. He is basking again in that circle of warmth and friends, all cheering him on, and is halfway back to the parking garage before he realizes he is smiling softly. 

**Contract #4**

Barry is on the phone with his mother when he gets the text from Fuches indicating he has another job lined up. Although the calls contain more awkward silence than conversation, he still picks up the phone and dials her every Saturday, ever the dutiful son. She always asks about work; he weaves her a beige tale of a boring job working in auto parts sales, a safe lie since he knows she doesn’t drive anymore and won’t ask him for car advice. She asks after any pretty coworkers, and it plays out, in some form or another, usually like this:

_All of my coworkers are either men or women over fifty._

_Well, you never know. Older women know the ropes._

_Mom, please._

_I’m just saying! You ought to settle down._

_I know, Mom._

It’s always horribly quiet after this, and Barry senses all the questions she wants to voice bubbling within that yawning silence. His father, whom they never, ever speak of, hovers at the edges of their talks, as rigid and tight-lipped in death as he was in life. Barry sometimes thinks they _must_ speak of him, that any minute one of them will break and mention his name or some quirk he used to have, and then they will have to talk about what he used to do for a living and how much his mother knew. Barry has spent hours desperately thinking over every interaction between his parents that he could remember witnessing, looking for any sign that she knew what was going on, or at least looking for any sign that she was purposefully turning a blind eye to her husband’s business. Over and over he comes up with nothing substantial; just a strange cut of the eyes, a hushed argument behind a closed door.

He knows the distance is his fault. He’s been physically gone from her since joining the military at eighteen, but he’s been keeping secrets from her for far longer than that, and even though he knows (or thinks) she’s not consciously aware of being lied to, the rift between them widens and spins out in infinite blackness anyway. It hurts in that space, in some vague sense. Barry knows they are both too afraid of what might be lurking in that space to try and reach across it, but occasionally Barry wonders if his mother might also be little afraid of _him._

He sometimes visualizes the conversations they can’t have.

_Barry, what really happened in Korengal?  
I murdered an innocent man and I can’t stop having nightmares about the fact that I don’t remember his face._

_Are you all right?  
I honestly don’t know._

_Mom, what did Dad really do for a living?  
You know the answer._

_Barry, you haven’t had a girlfriend in ten years.  
Don’t worry, Mom, I’m not gay. I’m just a hitman._

_What else aren’t you telling me?  
Everything, Mama. Everything._

He reads a new text from Fuches: _Call me. NOW._ He puts the burner phone facedown on the table and ignores it. “Who won at bingo last night?” he asks because he can’t stand the silence anymore, the feeling of disquiet and the sense that they are each of them talking to strangers. She loves talking about bingo, or rather, the other people who play. She weaves her own tales of the people she surrounds herself with, all of them with decades and decades of stories and family history and color and emotion; she tells their stories so vividly that Barry can almost smell the flowery, dusty smell he always associates with old people. So unlike their normal reserved conversations, she gossips about them with the sort of glee and wild abandon that makes Barry’s heart hurt with love and hope that maybe they still have some sort of relationship.

“That old oaf Witchins,” his mother says grumpily, “I think he needs his meds adjusted.”

The burner phone starts buzzing with an incoming call. “I have to go, Mom. I’ll talk to you next week.”

“All right, honey,” she says. The stilted reserve creeps back into her voice, but there’s warmth in it too. “Be good. I love you.”

“I will,” he says. “Love you too.” He hangs up and answers Fuches’s call. “What?”

“You ignoring my texts?”

“I was on the phone with my mother, Fuches.”

Fuches grunts. “Hmph. She never liked me, did she?”

“She has good taste,” Barry says without any bite.

**Contract #17**

Barry has never been much for going out and drinking with other people, but as he steps out of the wintry cold into some nameless bar in dreary downtown Memphis, he realizes he has never wanted a simple shot of whiskey poured by someone else more in his life. He wants to get fuck-drunk tonight, for no reason other than getting out of his own head for a few seconds. There had been an argument with Fuches over this hit, something he’d rather not think about, and the eyes of his mark, deep brown and flickering with liveliness just hours ago, keep niggling at him, picking softly at the sides of his brain for reasons he doesn’t understand. The bar is larger than it looked from outside, with a loud live band playing in one corner. They’re not good, but Barry couldn’t care less about their talent; he just wants a whole lot of alcohol and a place to sit. He gets the barista’s attention and orders two whiskey shots straight up, shoots them one after the other easily. The barista raises an eyebrow. She leans forward and raises her voice over the music. It’s a pretty voice, high and sing-songy.

“Gettin right into it, huh? Long day?”

Barry tips his head sideways with a _you know it_ expression and indicates he’d like another. She fills his shot glass again. “Anything else?”

“A beer and a water.” Her long ponytail swishes against her back as she reaches for the water glass on the top shelf. She’s stunning, Barry realizes belatedly; long straight hair that shines even in this low light, a sharp jaw and nose, perfect skin, wide playful eyes and a cute snaggletooth that only enhances the charm of her smile. She’s got a natural runner’s body; deceptively thin but quick and lithely muscled.

“Got a name?” she asks. Barry wonders if she’s chatty with all the bar patrons.

“Barry. How about you?”

“Ex.”

“What?”

“Like the letter X,” she says.

“Like as in Professor X?”

She laughs, only with the slightest tinge of I’ve heard that one before. “Something like that. I’m trying a thing.”

“Is the thing ‘see what I can get away with making people call me?’“

“More or less.”

“Much easier to do that when the people don’t know your real name to call you by.” Barry feels almost giddy. Maybe it’s the whiskey kicking in already, or maybe it’s the fact that he hasn’t spoken to anyone but Fuches for more than ten words in a row in months. He’s not naturally a flirt, but he’s been using his talent for anonymity as an advantage for this job for months now; maybe, he thinks, he can use it here, too. Maybe he can use it to become someone happy and interesting, sometimes, instead of just using it to become a nameless bullet to the back of the head.

X lowers her eyes, bashful. “It’s Rosemary,” she admits.

Barry sticks out his hand over the bar and she takes it. “Pleased to meet you, X,” he says. She grins at him. He grins back.

The band gets loud again, and people start flooding in, so X gets busy. Barry doesn’t mind; he likes people watching, sitting alone and nursing his beer. He likes how quick X is with everyone, how she seems to just know how to talk to each person as much or as little as they want to be talked to. Occasionally she will catch him watching her, wink a tight little wink, and slide him another shot. Eventually she scoots her way back to him. Leaning on the bar with her chin in her hand, she looks directly into Barry’s eyes.

“So. What do you do, Barry?”

“I work in auto parts sales. I’m in town for business.” The old lie; it comes out so easily it’s almost not a lie anymore.

“Boring,” X announces. Barry blinks.

“What?”

“Come on, you’re some anonymous guy in a bar talking to a girl you’ve never met before,” she says. “Make something up!”

Barry opens his mouth, stops. Shrugs. “You wanna know what I really do?” Her eyes sparkle as she nods. (His mark’s eyes flash at the edge of his consciousness, dark, frightened, his arms up in terrified uncomprehending surrender. Barry tries to push the thought away.) He leans in close to her ear and says in a low voice, “I’m a hitman.” Her eyebrows go up and Barry can’t help but grin at her shocked and delighted expression.

“That must be exciting,” she says, happily playing along.

Barry shrugs in false modesty. “Oh, you know,” he says airily. “It’s a tumultuous life. Full of intrigue and blood and betrayals. I did get to go to Paris once, though.”

It’s exhilarating. Barry feels like he’s been shocked, or like he’s stepped into some alternate reality. Everything feels warmer, nicer. People’s eyes lock onto his instead of passing right through him like they always do, and when he smiles tentatively, they smile back. X’s hands wheel gracefully through the air as she flits from one customer to the next, refilling drinks, maneuvering around the other barista, laughing with the old men at the end of the bar who look like they’ve been stationed there for years. The bar is decorated with Christmas lights, and they seem to wink at Barry specifically, to say _yes, this is your night._ The mark’s face paws at him like a cat unable to leave a string alone, but he shoves the thought away and this time it stays gone.

He chats with X about nothing, about everything; he can tell in some base animal way that she will go back to his hotel room with him if he asks. He’s planning on doing it, too, but she beats him to the punch by saying she’s off the clock in thirty minutes and lives in the apartment above the bar and would he like to come up for drinks.

They are barely at the top of the stairs before she’s pulling his jacket off of him. They stumble into her apartment; well, Barry stumbles, and X catches him by the shoulders, laughing quietly. She doesn’t turn the lights on, instead choosing to lead him by the hand to her room, and then they are kissing and her hands are on his back, sliding down and down and—

She jerks away from him, and the streetlights bathe her in eerie orange light and glint off of her frightened eyes and she is saying _Is that a gun in your jeans_ but it’s too late, the light caught her eyes in exactly the same way they caught the eyes of the mark he shot dead just hours ago and the alcohol, rather than dimming the memory like he hoped it would, brings the argument he had with Fuches roaring back with perfect, sickening clarity.

_“Listen, Fuches, I looked this guy up, and uh—"_

_“Why on earth would you do that?”_

_“I dunno, something didn’t sit right with me. I’ve been doing recon all day and I don’t think he did what the client thinks he did.”_

_“Really.” Flat voice, unbelieving. Not angry yet, but it could reach that pitch._

_“Yeah. Like I know what the client said, but like, wouldn’t this guy be contacting his associates by now if he was guilty? Pinning it on this guy just seems…”_

_“Flimsy?”_

_“Yeah.” He was grateful Fuches could see his point, but then Fuches sighed, and Barry’s heart sank._

_“Listen. Barry. I don’t trust you to do this job because you’re good at the research, okay. You leave that to old Uncle Fuches. I trust you because you’re a crack shot. You’re good at what you’re paid to do. Also, I wouldn’t mention this to the client, but he’s paying us way more than this job’s worth, so I suggest you just shut up and do it.”_

_“But I really think—"_

_“Barry.” Fuches’s voice had a flat finality to it. “Just do your job.”_

He thinks X might be saying something to him, but he’s still gone, still stuck in that flash of the victim’s eyes, and he realizes with a whoosh of breath why he can’t stop thinking about it--he always tries to kill so that the mark never knows what hit them; it’s quicker and easier when they don’t see you coming, but when he had aimed his gun this time, the victim had been facing him. Had seen the gun, had seen his death coming toward him, and had put his hands up in surrender. His posture, the way the light reflected his terrified eyes full of tears, the shaking of his hands so violent Barry clocked it even fifteen feet away, all screamed the same thing the body of the man in Korengal had screamed to him:

_Innocent._

“Barry!” X shouts, finally cutting across the memory and grabbing his attention.

“Sorry,” he exhales, helplessly, mortified at the sound of his own voice, at the monster he really is; he isn’t apologizing to X, not really. He stumbles back and practically runs for the door, tripping down the stairs and outside into the freezing cold. It has begun to snow. Barry finds another bar nearby and this time does not talk to anyone, just orders drink after drink until he can barely stand. He throws up while waiting for his Uber and again in the backseat, practically crawls to his hotel room, and falls asleep on the bathroom floor, shivering and cold.

**Contract #25**

When Barry drinks alone in his hotel room, or at his apartment in Cleveland, he will often pull out a notebook he keeps in his backpack and try to write letters of apology to the man he killed in Korengal. Sometimes they are to the man’s wife, or to his children. He was never given (or tried to find out) their names. They start, often, on his third glass of bottom shelf whiskey--long, rambling, overexplanatory, verging on accusing. _Look, the way you acted would have made anyone think you did it, what did you expect, didn’t you know who you were dealing with?_ As the nights wear on, though, the letters turn pleading, begging for understanding. _I thought my friend was gonna die in my hands, there was so much blood, I mean I’d seen blood before obviously but not his, this was different and I was so angry and scared._ By the end of it, at the bottom of the glass at the bottom of the night, he’s managed to dig out from under all the lies he tells himself and resorts to the bald useless truth: _I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. _

The thing he wants to be true, the thing he often writes in these rambling letters that always go in the trash the next morning, is that he would give anything to see that family again and to apologize to them directly; to offer them whatever they wanted, whatever they needed. But the real truth, buried so deep in his heart that he can’t ever bear to look at it full in the face, is that he is sneakily, dirtily grateful he never has to. He _wants_ to wish he could kneel before that mother, that wife, and hand her his combat knife and offer up his own throat in return, but at his core he is just a selfish, craven, hollowed-out shell in the shape of a human who knows that, if he were given the opportunity to see the woman face to face, he would run screaming in the other direction.

In some twisted cosmic way, he supposes his job is some kind of penance for his crime. Like if he takes out enough bad guys it’ll make up for the innocent life he stole. He knows he is inherently capable of incredible violence, and when Fuches gives him the files for his marks, he recognizes that same evil in them. And because Barry knows he doesn’t deserve a good life, he takes it upon himself to make sure other people like him don’t get one either.

He hopes that the cosmic forces of the universe understand what he’s trying to do.

**Contract #31**

The client paces back and forth. Barry watches her, trying to clock her age; he puts her at thirty-five, maybe. Around his own age. She looks like she’s had it rough. A sweatshirt too big for her small frame hangs off of one shoulder as she paces. Tattoos peak out from under the thin t-shirt she wears underneath: flower designs, part of a letter, a name and date scrawled up the side of her neck. Her fingernails are slightly yellowed, probably from the cigarettes she’s been chainsmoking since they made contact. She looks nervous, but her eyes are clear and sober and determined.

After a few minutes, Barry speaks up. “Ma’am–”

“I’m a good mother,” she interrupts. As though the sound of Barry’s voice triggered her into speaking, she finally lets loose. “You know? I work two shitty jobs just to keep this trailer so my son has a place to live. You know, CPS still makes him go to my ex-husband’s place every other weekend just because it’s nicer. It’s bullshit, you know. He’s a fuckin’ drug addict and I’ve been sober for nine years, ever since I found out I was pregnant. He just knows how to hide it. He can look respectable for them, play all nice and shit, then as soon as they leave he’s shootin’ speedballs with my son in the next room. That’s how I know they won’t do nothin’ about this.”

Barry waits, but she seems to have run out of steam for the moment. “Tell me about the mark,” he prompts.

She waves her hand to dissipate the cloud of smoke in front of her. “My ex. His name’s Daniel.” She closes her eyes and shivers at the sound of the name. “It’s all there in the file. I was willing to just try arguing with the courts over him being an addict to get him away from my Jordie, but then I found out… He’s been raping my son. Our own son. Only nine years old. I caught him doing it.”

Barry feels sick. Sometimes he thinks he’s hardened himself to every kind of criminal doing this job, and then someone goes and turns over yet another rock to reveal the maggots underneath. “Jesus,” he mutters. Then, he asks something he doesn’t usually bother asking and knows Fuches never asks: “Did you go to the police?”

She laughs bitterly. “Sure. They said I was hysterical. The cops here, they… They never want to mess with anything serious. Just wanna have their donuts and coffee and book a couple tweakers and a few drunk-and-disorderlies on the weekend and collect their paychecks. Plus, they still… I had some… Run-ins with them. Back when I was… I was a different person before Jordie came along.” She shakes her head. “I tried. They won’t do nothin’. That’s why I went lookin’ for you.”

A door creaks down the tiny hallway; a young voice calls sleepily. “Mom?”

The client (Heather, her name is Heather - Barry normally doesn’t keep track of client names, because he doesn’t always do the meetings, but Fuches is out of town so it fell to Barry this time and he’s glad; he’s not sure Fuches would have been able to deal with this one as delicately as it needs to be dealt with) moves toward the hallway, positioning her body so that she blocks the view; the child can’t see Barry, and Barry can’t see the child. Barry is grateful. She leans down and speaks in a low, calming voice, something about nightmares. The child says something, Barry can’t tell what, and Heather reaches out her hand. Presumably the child takes it, and she leads him back into another bedroom and closes the door.

“Sorry,” she apologizes as she comes back out. “Sometimes he has nightmares. He’ll sleep better in my bed.”

Barry nods. “You’re a good mom.”

She shakes her head, suddenly looking on the verge of tears. “I left my son alone with that monster. I’m at least partly responsible.” Very suddenly she shakes herself, straightens up. “It doesn’t matter. I want him gone, and I want it to hurt. That’s all I want.”

Barry stands up. “Yes, ma’am. I understand. Consider it done.” When he stands, he realizes all over again how tiny she is, and how strong at the same time. Whatever her past, she is trying now to protect her son, in the only way she knows how. If that doesn’t count as “good” in the cosmology of the universe, Barry isn’t sure he wants to be good. He senses her warmth, her love for her son, her iron core burning for some kind of twisted justice. It is usually easy for Barry to keep emotion out of his work, but this time he wants, desperately, to give her the justice she craves. He wants to make it hurt.

“Do you contact me after it’s done? Or how does that work?” she asks.

“It’s best not to in situations like this, but I guarantee it will be done within the next couple of days. You and your son will never have to see him again. I promise.” He sticks out his hand, and she takes it with a surprisingly firm grip. Then she lets go and, instead of stepping back, steps forward and gives him a fierce hug. He’s so shocked he actually gasps a little. He hasn’t been touched by anyone like this in months, maybe years, not since the last time he saw his own mother. His every nerve ending is lit aflame, his skin flushed with sudden emotion. It’s awkward since she’s so much smaller than he is, but he slowly lets his arms drop down around her shoulders and hugs her back, very gently; a wave of protectiveness washes over him, and he’s utterly certain in this moment that he would do anything she asked him to.

Barry follows Daniel at a distance for a day before closing in. He brings the gun Fuches sent him, but only as a habit. He plans to use the knife. He stabs the man in the nuts first, then in the stomach. Daniel begs for death before Barry is through with him, and Barry obliges with a savagery he rarely lets loose.

**Contract #39**

During a stakeout for mark number thirty-nine, cramped down in a secluded concrete stairwell, old gum squelching under his shoes, Barry gets a call on his iphone, the phone he uses exclusively to speak with his mother. He glances down at it, ready to turn off the screen and ignore the call, but it’s not his mother; it’s a number he doesn’t recognize, with the same area code as his mother’s. His stomach drops out, although he’s not sure why.

He slides his thumb across the phone. “Hello?”

“Hello, is this Barry Berkman?”

“Speaking.”

“Are you Melissa Berkman’s son?”

“Who’s asking?”

“Barry, this is the Cleveland police. There’s been an accident… Melissa Berkman has passed away. I’m so sorry.”

He can suddenly hear his own breathing. It is the only thing he can hear. “What… What kind of accident?”

“We think the driver that hit her was drunk,” the policeman says.

“But…” Nothing makes sense. “She didn’t drive. She didn’t even have a car.”

“She was the passenger. Truck hit her side of the car going sixty. She probably never saw it coming.” The policeman has a redneck lilt to his accent. Barry can’t tell if he’s putting it on to seem friendlier or if it’s natural.

“I…” All words have escaped him. His mind is as blank as a new sheet of paper.

“I’m sorry, son,” the man says again, “but we’re going to need you to come and identify the body.”

_I can’t_, he thinks immediately, _I can’t do that_. “I’m… Out of town for work at the moment, I can–I--I… I can be there tomorrow. Is that…?” Stringing a full sentence together feels like an impossible task. Thankfully the officer seems to understand.

“That’s just fine,” he says soothingly, his accent layered on a little thicker. Fake, Barry decides. To make people like him. Trust him. “She’s at St. Vincent’s on 22nd Street. You know it?”

“I. Yes.”

The officer gives Barry instructions on who to speak to at the hospital and says he’s sorry for the third time. This time his accent is so thick he could be from Alabama. _Probably doesn’t even realize he’s doing it,_ Barry thinks. Barry thanks him and hangs up.

The push bar of a heavy metal door clangs a couple of floors below Barry. He looks down, remembering with a jolt where he is. The mark walks through, a slight, small man with a shaved head and rings on every finger. An older woman follows him, walking with the stumble of the supremely high. The mark’s mother, Barry knows from Fuches’s research.

All sound drops out. Barry sinks deep into the rage that boils in his chest like an overflowing river. The unfairness of it sears his brain in a flash; that this scumbag gets to have what he no longer has. The man has been running a drug ring with his family either in on it or looking the other way and covering for him. Barry lets the fury and fire and hatred flood through his veins until he is a live wire, ready to deliver a walloping shock to anyone who comes too close.

The two start up the stairs. They either don’t hear Barry coming or don’t care, but it doesn’t matter if they hear him or not. They are stumbling, both of them, he can see it now; both high out of their minds, the mark holding onto his mother’s sleeve like a small child. For a moment he looks almost vulnerable, his fingers hooked into her shirt instead of around her wrist, like his hand is a child’s hand, too small to grip, and the sleeve is easier. Barry’s mind sideslips into a memory so strong he nearly staggers, of holding onto his mother’s sleeve at the grocery store in the exact same way. The comforting smell of her, the soft well-worn sleeve of the sweatshirt she donned on the weekends. Her voice asking Barry what he wanted for dinner. _Pizza!_ Barry had shouted in his tiny seven-year-old voice. His fingers hooked in her sleeve so he wouldn’t get lost.

Barry shoots the mother first. She falls backward in slow motion. The mark’s fingers rip free of her sleeve as she falls and he looks back at her, confused, before looking up at Barry and seeing the gun. His reaction is laughably slow. Barry shoots him with no thought at all, the electrical current of his rage transmuting from his body to his weapon as naturally and easily as sliding into a warm bath. Both of them are dead before they hit the concrete landing three stairs down. Their bodies form a broken, mangled circle.

Barry leaves.

The rage carries him all the way back to the hotel and then dissipates in a slow rush, leaving him staggered and shocked. He doesn’t know what else to do; he realizes it is Saturday and it is almost time to call his mother, and he dials and lets it ring three times before reality interrupts the automatic function. He lowers the phone before her voicemail message picks up. Mindlessly, he putters around the room, picking things up and putting them down without recognizing what he’s doing, pushing the desk chair in, then pulling it out and sitting in it for a moment before getting up again. He washes his hands multiples times until they ache and burn.

Eventually, he lays down and goes to sleep.

The next day he is awake for almost ten minutes before he remembers. He answers Fuches’s texts with the customary monosyllables so that he will not ask questions. He takes the flight that Fuches booked for him back to Cleveland and orders a cab to the hospital. He speaks with the front desk as instructed and they lead him down to the morgue, touching him with sympathetic hands and casting sad yet professional glances downward when he looks at them. He wishes he could feel anything they’re trying to give him. He wraps his arms around himself and clamps down tight on his jaw.

The morgue is chilly and impersonal. The air crackles with dry chemicals and sterilization; Barry feels poisoned by it, suspended in some in-between state straddling death and life. A body lies on a metal table, covered with a sheet. Even before they raise the sheet Barry knows the shape of his mother. He would know it anywhere, whether in silhouette on a beach or by the way a lock of hair fell behind her ear or disappearing in a crowd or covered with her death sheet.

Barry has killed several dozens of people doing this job, even more while in the military, but he is not prepared when the doctor lifts the sheet. She barely looks like his mother anymore; she just looks like one of his victims. Her face is white and bruised nightshade black down one side. Her green eyes are closed forever. She’s been stripped of her clothes, and it feels indecent to look at her. He forces out some kind of confirmation that this is indeed Melissa Berkman, and the nurses make apologetic noises in return, promising to give him a few minutes alone. They leave, and Barry is alone in a room with a dead body. He thinks he should be used to it by now.

_I don’t know how to talk to you anymore,_ he remembers her saying once on a phone call. _You’re so much like_... It was the closest they ever came to mentioning Barry’s father, and it made Barry’s breath catch and stick in his throat, but she just finished with _I don’t know how that happened._ She’d been drunk and mournful and it made Barry wish he could hug her. 

_It’s just me,_ he’d said, a little helplessly. He wanted to say something else, but she’d shaken off the honesty like water then, and talked about bingo night until the awkwardness dissipated a little, and they never spoke of it.

He wonders if he should say something now, then decides against it. What could he possibly say that would matter? _I lied to you?_ Or _I kill people for money and I think it’s destroying my soul?_ Not even saying _I love you,_ though perfectly true, would bring her back. They’re just words, this is just a dead body, and saying them would confirm his fear that he never really grew up, that inside he is still just a child holding onto his mother’s sleeve, trying not to get lost. He leans down, careful to avoid her bruises, and kisses her forehead. One word falls unbidden from his lips, the most inconsequential word he could possibly say now because he could not say it when it mattered: “Sorry.” 

He turns abruptly on his heel and strides out of the room, away from his mother for the last time. “Excuse me, where is the bathroom?” he asks in what he hopes is a polite, normal voice. The nurses point him toward the bathroom and he thanks them and locks himself in. He puts his back up against the door for good measure, as though trying to keep out some monster outside. But the monster’s in here.

Sliding down to the floor, he pulls his knees in tightly to his chest. He drags shaking fingers over his face and then starts to hit his forehead with both hands, over and over again, trying to keep the howling void in his chest from turning inside out and consuming him whole. Then, giving up completely, he tucks his arms in between his chest and his legs, buries his slap-reddened face in his knees, and sobs.

Eventually his tears dry up, but his body is still going through the motions of crying as he pushes himself off the floor, blind aftershocks of emotion; the sobs are nothing but empty mechanical jerks of his shoulders, voiceless exhalations without depth or meaning behind them. He can’t bear to look at himself in the mirror. He knows he has to speak with someone about funeral arrangements eventually, but he can’t bear that either. He feels crushed under the weight of all the things he cannot bear. So he stops fighting it. Standing on wobbly knees, bracing himself on the sink with his head bowed, he finally looks at that bone deep truth he could never voice in his letters to the Korengal family and accepts himself for what he is: a hideous, ruined coward.

**Contracts #40-67**

After his mother’s death, he takes every shred of emotion and shoves it into a tiny box at the back of his head. There is little room for humanity in this job, and he feels as though he’s been stumbling through it with a hobbled leg. It’s like his mother was his last thread connecting him to even the concept of people as human beings; now, with that severed, it’s easier to see people, himself included, as targets or bullseyes or machines with predictable moving parts. With his humanity boxed up and forgotten like extra dishware, the job becomes easy, almost mundane. Each one follows the same path; there’s a rhythm to the work, a metronome ticking each beat, and he finally feels like he’s stepping into it. He measures out time in death. He stops questioning whether his marks are innocent; he stops questioning anything at all. He moves through the world on some kind of deadly autopilot. Every kill is efficient, passionless, and clean.

He becomes a ghost. He learns how to make people’s eyes pass right through him; he wears nondescript bland clothing, he unclenches his jaw to soften the hard edge of it, he slumps just a little, he relaxes his eyebrows until his expression is completely neutral, devoid of any kind of thought or emotion, just a natural blankness with the occasional mild interest in some passing thing. He learns then how to materialize suddenly, to solidify all molecules at once into the killing machine of his body. There are long stretches of days when he talks to no one. His voice rusts like disused piping, the residue of unspoken secrets crowding his throat. Once or twice he comes dangerously close to screaming at passersby, just to see them react to his presence. His days are full of death and silence; the silence of bodies, the silence of the phone he still keeps where his mother used to call, the silence of his own mouth. Even Fuches is unnerved by his stoniness, his unending quiet. Fuches’s heart is a stone, too, but he still has a life with some version of joy in it. Barry only has this: his purpose, his cowardice, his silence.

**Contract #68**

It wears on him; of course it does. Barry slowly stops going out for anything other than work, orders takeout for every meal he remembers to eat. He sleeps all the time, at all hours of the day. Nightmares wake him constantly, but it’s never anything specific; just a constant, terrible feeling of guilt and of having lost his grip on something he wasn’t supposed to lose. Once, offhandedly, Fuches suggests he see a therapist, almost as a joke, the unspoken subtext being _There are no therapists for monsters like us_; but Barry, having never thought about seeing one before, is floored, stunned by the concept. Fuches doesn’t notice the different weight to Barry’s silence because Barry is silent most of the time these days. But it’s like Fuches just opened a door to some sort of freedom that Barry never knew was there, and then shut it in his face before he could gather himself enough to step through. Like offering a plate of food to someone who didn’t know they were starving and then snatching it away.

He supposes it makes sense that the flu hits him as hard as it does that November.

That morning, he breaks into the mark’s apartment and finds the man in bed, snuffling and coughing in his sleep, surrounded by used tissues. He kills the man and leaves quickly, but it’s too late; by the afternoon he feels the burn start in his throat, and by the next morning he’s shivering and weak in his bed, both cold and drenched in sweat at the same time. He tries to sit up and groans in pain, squeezing his eyes shut against the headache that is pounding directly behind his eyeballs. As steadily as he can, he opens the medicine cabinet, already sensing with a sinking heart that he doesn’t have much more than ibuprofen. He’s right; the shelves are mostly bare except for a half dose of expired Nyquil left in one bottle and a microwaveable heating pad that’s been collecting dust for years. He takes the Nyquil and downs three ibuprofen with it.

Nothing helps. As the afternoon drags, his fever slowly but surely rises until his vision swims and blurs. He can’t seem to fall completely asleep and can’t wake all the way up. Trapped in that half-dreaming state, he can’t keep track of what he’s doing and what he’s imagining; he thinks for sure that he opened a box of crackers and ate a few, only to come to several hours later to find the box inexplicably perched on top of his Playstation, unopened.

It isn’t until his mother appears that he realizes how high his fever must be.

He stares at her openmouthed, in perfect shock. She looks young again, her hair permed like it had been in the eighties, her glasses huge.

“Oh, Barry,” she says, dejected. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

He finds what’s left of his voice. “Tell you what?” he croaks.

But she just shakes her head like she did when she caught him breaking the rules as a child. Disappointed, like she expected better and now has a lower opinion of him. Barry feels about two inches tall; his eyes burn with shame. He closes his eyes against it, hiding his face in his pillow, and when he struggles back to waking again an hour later, she’s gone and Fuches is there with black eyes and no kindness in his cold smile. 

“Did you make your heart a stone?” Fuches asks.

“I tried, but it hurts.” Fuches nods like he understands this. In his hands is a bowl as black as his eyes, and Barry doesn’t have to look inside to know that it’s full of blood, and that Fuches wants to feed it to him.

“Please.” The word is nothing more than a frightened hiss tearing at his raw throat. Barry starts to cry, scooting weakly away from the demon wearing his uncle’s face. He buries his head in his hands, exhausted, his whole body on fire. “Please, I don’t want it anymore.” 

He starts to fade out again then, but he hears Fuches say, clear as a bell, “It doesn’t matter what you want. It matters what you do.”

**Contract #78**

Ryan Madison is like a snort of heroin straight up the nose.

Barry stares at the smiling, goofy man on stage in front of him, this man who was meant to be dead already. His extremely fake dreads flop against his face as he makes exaggerated gestures, performing his lines with gusto and panache. Stunned, Barry nearly forgets that he was brought up on stage to a be a scene partner, which must mean he has a line or two. He skims through the page, finds what he hopes is the right line, and says it. Ryan jumps up, enraged, knocking the solo cups in front of him out of the way with a swipe of his hand. He advances on Barry, but then his face changes. He stops, turns to the audience and says, still immersed in the fake accent, “End _scene_.”

If Ryan was a snort of heroin, the applause that swells from the smattering of fellow students is like a shot of the purest stuff directly into his veins. Barry looks out at the cheering crowd and, heart pounding out of control, realizes that they see him—they _see him_. It was just one inconsequential line, but somehow it cracked the shell he had around himself. This crowd of strangers reached up to him and ripped off his anonymity, stripped him down to bare bones under bright stage lights, witnessed him naked, and did not run screaming, did not find him wanting or cowardly or monstrous and walk away disappointed; they applauded. _They cheered_.

As the clapping continues, Barry decides he will do anything to keep this.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the poem “How To Kill” by Keith Douglas.
> 
> I really wasn’t gonna write this. Then ideas started smacking me in the face until I wrote them down. Then I forgot about it for a month and when I came back to it, I didn't say "this is nothing," so I'm posting it.
> 
> This was a real strange exercise in empathy for a character people don't seem to think is okay to empathize with. I dunno. marge-simpson-i-just-think-he's-neat.jpg


End file.
